I admit it: even after denouncing Nintendo several times on this site, I was finally tempted enough to buy another of their games. I still don’t forgive them for canceling The Big House Online tournament, but having finally properly gotten into Mario Tennis Aces, I could not stay away from Camelot’s next title – Mario Golf: Super Rush. 

I didn’t want to participate in the rat race of posting the first review online, so this is rather my essayish impression of the latter vs. the former after having played through the single-player campaigns of both titles, as well as a fair number of multiplayer matches in both. On my gaming resume, I submit my “semi-pro” Smash skills and the fact that I got two Eagle 2s on Par 4s in my last Super Rush online match, including one to cap it off on the eighteenth hole.  

Basic Mechanics of Mario Golf: Super Rush

To start, we had to know that this iteration of Mario Golf would not be as esports-worthy as Mario Tennis Aces was. Tennis is uniquely geared for competitive one-on-one gameplay, and Camelot had the freedom there to introduce wild mechanics like Zone Shots and Zone Speed, which could not be matched even by the greatest real tennis players of all time but fit right into the Mario universe. 

In Mario’s take on golf… well, they could add hazards like lava zones or Piranha Plants, a few wacky mechanics like Special Shots, and the titular traversal mechanics. It’s hard to think of more they could do, and they sure did add those things. There are a few missing mini-games from predecessors, like mini-golf and Club Slots, but those can’t sustain interest for years on end anyway, at least for most of us. 

This game won’t have a robust competitive scene, not because of the incompetence of Nintendo but rather due to its shallower gameplay. It looks like Camelot knew that was the case, as evidenced by their not bothering to include a ranked or competitive mode at all. Mario Golf: Super Rush doesn’t even have something as basic as Mario Tennis Aces’ online “tournaments.” 

By its own merits, Super Rush does do a few things better than older Mario Golf titles, but a few changes feel like change just for the sake of change. For examples: The ability to curve a shot in multiple directions, one after the next, given a good enough spin stat, makes for some incredible shots with a high skill ceiling. However, super topspin was outright removed, and both backspin and super backspin were made marginally easier. 

For context, previous titles featured the player, on the third button press of their shot, hitting A or B once for standard spin, B twice for regular backspin, B then A for super backspin, A twice for topspin, and A then B for super topspin. This was done as the swing made contact with the ball, rather than when the player second hit a button to lock in that shot’s power. Now, however, you pick spin on your second rather than third and final button press, have fewer spin options, and there’s a simplified one-button spin select. Topspin comes with only one-speed setting which is done by hitting A twice, backspin is done with a single B press, and Super Backspin is performed by double-tapping B. 

Super Rush also makes the third “click” unnecessary, though I keep hitting the buttons three times out of muscle memory, since locking in the power and spin is done at once, and as the final step. Then, the shot randomly decides whether it will shift a little or not, at least if you’re hitting the ball strong enough to be in the red zone of the meter. I prefer more aspects of the old system, but it’s largely a matter of personal preference, and Super Rush’s shot curving mechanic is absolutely awesome. Plus, I like the courses here. And the amount of content (characters, courses, maybe even game modes, and hopefully animations) in Super Rush is only going to grow through the magic of updates.

I also think that the shift system introduces some healthy risk and reward into smashing long bombs, and that naturally, real life golfers sometimes shank shots when they try to hit them too hard, especially in tough lies. However, the Game Boy Advance and GameCube Mario Golf titles both offered similar risks and rewards but kept player agency. In those older titles, perfect timing on the third button press would allow for a player to retain that charge of their Power shots, while the normal shots would have no penalty for bad timing other than marginally affected aim. 

I think that both systems are much better than most golf games, where developers often let players essentially be Terminators who can launch perfectly aimed balls every time. I even remember an old Tiger Woods title on the GameCube allowing players to spin the ball in any direction, while it was in flight. There’s not much competition for Camelot nowadays, since just about every other sports game is a watered-down simulation of the real sport. Most sports simulations will be less fun than both the real sport and the Mario version, with all of the former’s realness and the latter’s charming and uniquely digital possibilities.

However, compared to Aces, which left its predecessors in the dust to the point that it was hard to even think about going back to previous Mario Tennis titles, Super Rush doesn’t innovate enough to do so to its ancestors in the Mario Golf series. I played a single solo round of Toadstool Tour for the GameCube atop Congo Canopy, after wondering how it would hold up. And honestly, I was having a better time there than I did in the one regular golf match I played online with strangers in Super Rush. It’s just an older game with no chances to grow, and virtually no more players. That round was also the point where I discovered that Camelot have been reusing the same audio clip of some bird hooting twice since 2003, at the latest. In short, Super Rush is not some masterpiece that will redefine the way you think about golf games or Mario or anything, is not quite up to the par of Nintendo’s flagship releases in the last couple of years, but its mechanics are deep enough for longtime fans and intuitive enough for newcomers to enjoy.

Speed Golf Keeps Things Interesting

After the nightmare that was my almost two-hour online match of Super Rush with a guy who had no idea how to play, a Rosalina whose salt became palpable after he hit a wooden bridge running overtop one of the holes, and a Boo who took 95 years to line up just about every shot… I decided to never play regular golf online again, at least with the “Take Turns” option turned on. 

Instead, Speed Golf is where it’s at with Super Rush. Compared to Aces, the online offerings are pretty limited, but it’s still a lot of fun with friends. I’m just disappointed, again, by Nintendo’s lack of understanding of how to create an engaging online experience for players who dissect mechanics and try to become the best they can. I think an online ranked mode would be welcome, personally; there’s enough mechanical depth for the climb to be interesting. Maybe the next console generation will be the one where Nintendo figures out online play, but I doubt it.

The non-Speed version of Mario Golf: Super Rush is also lacking in the features department, with no replays – my brother’s first Hole in One had a bad camera angle, and we have only the captured clip on my Switch to remember it by. The camera angles are alright in regular golf, but still… Speed Golf is clearly the way the game was designed to be played. It’s just a shame that you can hardly see where your ball landed a lot of the time, and have to rely on the mini-map. Some picture-in-picture would be nice, if not in split-screen with more than two people.

In this mode, players are encouraged to take a maximum of seven clubs before they start to lose speed. And speed is very important, given its name. Both scoring options – one with points going to the winner of the hole a la real golf’s “match play” and one that totals the players’ total times – are fun and engaging, though I would like to see total strokes at least counted. Anyway, with a stamina bar, hearts that replenish said stamina, the ability to dash and slowly deplete meter or super dash to quickly deplete a big chunk of meter in order to run fastest and bowl people and their golf balls out of the way, and coins that fill up the player’s Special Shot meter, there’s a fair bit that can keep the treks interesting.

It’s much better than staring at a Boo who’s either on their phone or some other obtrusive nothingness while we’re supposedly playing a video game, anyway.

Still, when pitting even this mode of Mario Golf: Super Rush vs. Mario Tennis Aces, it’s just nowhere near as deep, competitive, or just plain fun. And it doesn’t quite hit a perfect shot with Speed Golf, either – it would be awesome to see some platformer mechanics interwoven with the run to the ball. For example, a walljump, fast-fall, float, actual platforms, and/or some power-ups would make Speed Golf much more engaging. Instead, we just kind of run around regular golf courses with maybe a hazard or two, occasionally bumping into our opponents. Ridgerock Lake does have some updrafts scattered throughout the course which aid with vertical traversal, but they’re largely unused in multiplayer, even in Speed Golf. I want to see many more course features like that in future updates. Being able to do some of Mario’s platforming moves beyond a single jump and having more stuff scattered around on the course would make Speed Golf much better, in my opinion.

Battle Golf is my favorite version of Speed Golf, a chaotic fight to finish three of nine holes first, in a hectic arena filled with other golf shots and obstacles. It’s much, much better with four players when compared to two, however. I wish we could play with even more people, a la 8 Player Smash or this game’s opening cinematic. Regular golf is probably Super Rush’s best head-to-head game mode, but it still falls short of the other Mario sports game on the Switch right now. 

Mario Tennis Aces had the potential for wonderfully cerebral battles with fast reactions, baits, positional gambits, and excellent fighting game style meter management. Being a golf game, Super Rush is just outmatched in comparisons of the two, and the latter feels less polished than Aces overall. But it’s still a solidly fun game that the cross-section of golf players and Mario fans will no doubt adore. I could see myself putting a fair number of hours into the links with friends, as long as we’re allowed to run from ball to ball.

A Disappointing Story Mode

Sorry, Nintendo, but I’m hereby invoking the names of Mother Earth and all the stars everywhere to inform you that the Universe Itself forbids you from ever putting a Mii in another video game, ever again! Amen. 

Seriously, though, why do they still think people want these weird, lifeless action figures in games? They were a fun little quirk of the Wii that let kids laugh at the fact that they had pale imitations of Mohandas Gandhi or Yoda or Barack Obama or Peter Griffin or some disfigured, horrific abominations on their consoles. It’s time to let it go, now. The voices on both of the Mii genders in this game became unbearable after about five minutes of the campaign. There was constant high-pitched squealing that made each trek from ball to ball dreadful, especially when I had to jump repeatedly and was forced to hear my Mii go, “YAY YAY WOO YAY WOO WOO YAAAAAAY!”

Said campaign, called Golf Adventure, has an unexpected structure. It’s very much like Pokémon, but you’re a Mii playing golf with Mario and co. Oh, and Birdo plays the part of Poké-mom.

The Pokémon thing is a comparison which I couldn’t stop returning to, couldn’t shake off as I played through the story mode. You even get a set of different badges as you progress. There’s not much of a story, truthfully. NPCs exist as stationary dialogue dispensers, but they usually have very little to say, and only very rarely anything interesting. I remember in particular one Koopa Paratroopa outside the camp-house who said, before the final round of my first tournament, that he couldn’t stop to talk because he had to get a good spot to watch it. Then, he proceeded to continue flapping his wings in place, two inches off the ground. 

The most praise I can give the story is that a kid who tolerates golf and likes Mario, vaguely between the ages of six and twelve, would probably think this is one of the best games ever. However, I’d instead give that kid a copy of Mario Golf: Advance Tour for the Game Boy Advance. 

In that game, as in its tennis equivalent Power Tour, the player character is a human being trying to make it to the top echelon of their preferred sport. If they accomplish that dream, they get to play it with Mario and crew. Simple, but much more effective than dropping a random Mii into the Mushroom Kingdom to talk to unmoving Pokémon NPCs with Mario models and noises. The ending of Super Rush is also significantly weaker than the triumphant finales of the Game Boy titles, there are very few animations, and the Mii player character obviously has very little personality, even less so than the silent protagonists of the Game Boy games, with their baseline facial expressions.

When compared to even Mario Tennis Aces, Mario Golf: Super Rush’s story might even be a step backwards for Camelot. Aces had a serviceable enough formula – walk to a new area, play a game of regular tennis, rush to the boss or do an optional fun little practice mini-game after doing one obligatory mini-game, fight a fun boss with incredible music, and finally move on to a new area, where you’d do it all again with a few twists. And there were some solid endgame challenges after you beat the final boss. You also got to play as Mario in Mario Tennis Aces. Super Rush has a much dimmer formula by comparison, where the player does eerily familiar things on each of the courses, with no particularly shocking twists, and I still can’t get over the shoehorned-in Mii. 

The highlight of Golf Adventure for me was Cross Country (“XC”) Golf, where you pick which hole to go to next while traversing the topographically segmented Ridgerock Lake, always teeing off from near the last hole you finished, and then aiming for a new one of your choosing. This was the course with the updrafts I mentioned. Only in the story mode’s XC Golf are these pseudo-tornadoes used to their fullest potential.

There were only two boss fights I remember in Mario Golf: Super Rush – if I’m wrong, that’s more of an indictment of the game than my memory, I think – and neither was particularly interesting compared to the highlights that were the Snow Ogre and the final boss of Mario Tennis Aces. There’s a bland bird boss in Super Rush called a “Sacred Flamebeast,” which is a huge missed opportunity. Call it an Albatross or a Condor, no? Those are actually golf-related in some way and not just a Mario rip-off of Moltres. That beast does have one of my favorite songs in the game, at least, but the gameplay of both bosses is just not that interesting, and the story behind the final baddie is just weird.

That said, I did finish the title’s Golf Adventure of my own free will, only mildly compelled by the writing of this article. It held my interest largely by itself, in other words. The mechanics are solid enough. I just wish that there was more variance from area to area and that there was less solo speed golf, since running to your ball and doing Special Shots isn’t all that interesting without other characters in the game. And even when you do have AI golfers on the screen, there’s no way to fast forward through the AI taking their sweet time and clearly intentionally missing putts. 

The… let’s call it a “plot twist,” I guess… that brings Mario Golf: Super Rush’s single player campaign from mundane to downright weird in its final act feels like a quiet and less interesting echo of Bask from Mario Tennis Aces, as well.

The written dialogue isn’t great in either Super Rush or Aces, and the former clearly reused the dialogue engine of the latter, with only a maximum of four characters appearing on screen to spout their juvenile text-based dialogue with minimal animation and odd Mario noises. Most adults will likely just mash through this. But like I said, children would likely love certain characters, such as the second guy who teaches you the way of lobbing the golf ball with a Lob Wedge. I feel like I missed the boat on this one by being born in the last millennium, but I don’t regret beating Mario Golf: Super Rush’s single player mode, for what that’s worth.

Oh, but it is really weird to me that they’d bother to add the “Duff Shot” mechanic that the teacher from the above paragraph hands down to you, but that it would be present only in the single player. It’s a high-risk high-reward shot with a fun timing mechanic, only performable with a Lob Wedge. Other interesting shakeups to the formula, like a 3 Wood which can skip over water and another that leaps out of sand, are left as gimmicks in Golf Adventure. That these shots are not accessible in normal play ** < Unless I missed something, I guess, but I can’t find it online or in the game anywhere > ** is a shame.

Score Attack

My favorite single player mode in Super Rush is Score Attack, probably the best way to enjoy golfing by yourself in this game. I would still recommend playing Golf Adventure first, since it’s a solid tutorial, but working to improve my best scores on each of the current six non-Battle-Golf courses invoked the same feelings I got as a teenager fighting against the local golf course over and over while trying out for my high school’s golf team. However, now I can actually sink putts. Virtually. It’s great.

However, I don’t think that this mode, or its Speed Golf equivalent Speed Attack, has any leaderboards. Competitive players will have to post their scores and / or times on some third-party website to verify records, if that’s the case. Classic Nintendo. Oh well. 

Repetitive Animations and Music

In what is perhaps the thing I want Camelot to change the most post-release, each character has only three post-hole animations. You’ve got one for below par, one for par, and one for above par. That’s it. But let me tell you as someone who’s played perhaps too much real golf in their lifetime… there’s a huge difference in emotion for a triple bogey vs. a regular bogey, and for an eagle vs. a birdie. Super Rush even has the same animation for the near-mythical albatross as it does for a simple, anonymous birdie. It’s a shame, because Toadstool Tour for the GameCube had five post-hole animations, and that was enough variance to keep said animations interesting and distinct. Also, characters just kind of teleport and then phase out of existence before and after their post-hole animations in Speed Golf. That can be a tad distracting and is always odd.

We’ve got here a cast of characters who feel comparatively lifeless to many of their other iterations. There are some standouts, of course. King Bob-omb is awesome just by being in a game for the first time in a long time; Donkey Kong has a great putting grip, holding it near the bottom and between his fingers, but his eyes are open just a little too wide for me to not be unsettled when looking at him; Wario rolled up to the course with a John Daly cosplay outfit, a cowboy hat, and a jetpack golf bag; Waluigi is doing some kind of weird Michael Jackson cosplay and is his usual fluid, goofy self; Pauline uses a microphone for her Special Shot, and it again plays a sample of Jump Up Super Star! as it did in Aces. But even these characters get old after a while. 

Rather than searching online for tier lists, I recommend just rotating through the roster as you get bored of the last character, or as you unlock new of clubs for them, which improve their stats. The minimal differences between the characters aren’t worth seeing the same small list of animations playing out over and over and over and over, trust me. Unlocking the clubs doesn’t take too long, either. And improving your scores can be intensely enjoyable, if a little frustrating at times. 

Mario Tennis Aces had a pool of animations that would also get a little old after a while, but most of them were fluid enough – Trick Shots especially – that I didn’t mind it too much, especially in comparison to Mario Golf: Super Rush. Only the Special Shots in Aces got a little stale after a while of “maining” any given character. That problem is exponentialized in Super Rush, as a much slower game with canned, uninspiring animations. And even the post-point and post-game animations in Aces were cooler, with little touches like broken rackets being broken in the cutscenes as well as the game itself. Aces also has a replay mechanic of any kind, and a fairly good one at that.

I think the Mario sports games have potential to grow into much more dazzling visual spectacles, with plenty of emotion on characters’ faces, in their exaggerated body language and distinct styles, and through their superhuman powers. Not a whole lot of that in Super Rush, unfortunately. It leans a little too much on the “Golf” part of its title, and not enough on the other words.

The music, also, is rather dull. Aces had a similar problem, with just one track for most stadiums or situations. It’s a similar situation here, with each course having one song most of the time and situations like birdie or bogey putts having a more frantic track. It all gets old fast, and there are no bangers like the boss music from Aces.

In Conclusion

Camelot left this metaphorical ball in the fairway right before the green that represents Nintendo’s other offerings on the Switch. Given a few more months of patches and effort that introduce new animations and content, I think this game could be amazing. Nintendo doesn’t have a history of mind-blowing patches or price decreases, though, so I think that people on the fence may stay on the fence for a bit. However, if you’ve played previous games or you have friends that are hitting the links right now, there’s no harm in trying Super Rush out. 

You certainly don’t need to beat the whole Golf Adventure, but it’s a decent enough single player that will set you up for success online or in-person as we start being able to enjoy video games with friends again, now with less fear of catching a potentially deadly virus in the midst of a global pandemic. The online has some lag, as one would expect from Nintendo Switch Online Feat. Dial-Up, but that thankfully doesn’t affect much when you’re playing a golf game.

It’s just hard to not be a little down in the dumps when comparing Mario Golf: Super Rush to Mario Tennis Aces. It wasn’t ever going to be the mechanical marvel that the latter title was and still is. There’s just simply no way that Nintendo could ever make an esport out of this one. There’s depth, but it’s more like the diving well of a community pool than the deep lake that was Aces or the vast ocean of other competitive titles out there. I wish there was more imagination and creativity in this title.

Still, Mario Golf: Super Rush is a fun time. I’d recommend at least having fun with it while the player base is at its largest, if you even tangentially have an interest in it, or getting it as a gift for the Mario-loving and golf-playing child in your life. Super Rush has all the potential to be absorbing for a lot of people, for a good double-digit number of hours, even if it can’t quite measure up to its fellow Camelot game on the Nintendo Switch.